You obviously know Ian Williams (aka E-Weezie or The Bawse), but you probably didn't know that these Dunk SB's were HIS shoes...

You see, this Dunk SB color design represented an integral part of Ian's journey. He started out at Nike World Headquarters as a janitor/custodian, and he worked his way up into becoming one of the most well known Footwear Developers around town. That isn't your usual career map, but that's what makes the story so inspiring. Hard work and determination play key roles in experiencing critical milestones in life, and Ian is living proof.

This "Wet Floor" colorway was inspired by the infamous yellow "Caution: Wet Floor" signs that most custodians use. The yellow upper is obviously reminiscent of the actual sign color, and the black/red hits were inspired by the sign text and graphics. The patent leather toe and Swoosh represented squeaky-clean floors, but this Sample pair has a regular leather panel (see the last photo for comparison).

As great as they are, footwear collaborations are becoming somewhat commonplace in today's market. It almost seems like there are new projects popping up on a daily basis with every major brand. But, when's the last time you saw one that made you <insert emoji with huge eyes popping out>...?

This is an Air Jordan II Sample that was mocked up by D'Wayne Edwards and the team over at Pensole Footwear Design Academy. If you haven't heard of the Pensole, then you've probably been living under a rock. Use a quick Google search, and you'll quickly realize that the academy is a pioneering design school that drives a lot of creativity and imagination out of aspiring footwear designers from all over the world.

What was the inspiration? The initial creative driving force of many Pensole Academy students (including the founder D'Wayne Edwards himself)... A regular No. 2 pencil. Every single detail was meticulously thought out and executed to the highest standard, from the pink rubberized lace aglets (a nod to the pink eraser head), to the metallic detailing shown above (inspired by the "ferrule" of a pencil, or the metal piece that holds the eraser in place).

As of now, there are no plans of a future release. Let's hope that changes, as I would definitely love to snag a pair or two. These are currently on display at Deadstock Coffee, but only for a limited time. Stop by to check them out while you still can!

On a crisp, sunny Thursday afternoon in late March, Nike fans from around the globe made their way by foot, bike, bus, subway, cab, and Uber to a massive warehouse on the border of the West Village and TriBeCa in New York for Air Max Con.

For two hours, thousands of sneakerheads stood in line to enter a convention we didn’t know much about. Everyone had their best Air Maxes, Jordans and Flyknits on for the momentous occasion. This was the first time Nike had put on a convention of this magnitude for a day (Air Max Day) that they created just three years ago to honor the legacy of ground-breaking NIKE AIR technology.

Once we entered the warehouse, there was much to take in. NYC powerhouse Kith set up a cereal bar. There was a SNKRS store. Women (and men) were getting their nails done in a salon. The young Spaghetti Boys were signing posters. Nike designers were holding seminars. And all throughout, OG Nike Air Max running shoes hung on the walls like pieces of art.

What caught my attention the most, however, was the massive pigeon hanging from the ceiling as you entered the convention. He was constructed completely out of orange Nike boxes. Wings spread, his foreboding visage staring down on us, the caption in front of him read boldly, “Air to the Throne.” I had to learn more.

'Air to the Throne' at Air Max Con

As I walked through the exhibit, there were more animals created out of boxes. A savage creature that resembled one of the Gorillaz band members sat in front of the SNKRS store. A bear head hung on the wall, like it was the prize of some esteemed game hunter. Amidst the creatures was a hip, friendly gentleman being interviewed by Fuse TV, with a massive Nike promotional sign hanging above him that read CHRISTOPHE ROBERTS. I snapped some pictures, found his Instagram account, and moved on.

Flipping through all my photos from the day a few hours later, the work of Mr. Roberts continued to stand out. I decided to reach out to him in an effort to learn more about his work. After a few emails back and forth, I was invited to see his studio in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn - an area I knew nothing about.

On a much warmer Sunday afternoon about a month later, I requested an Uber on my iPhone and was soon on my way to Clinton Hill. “Ah Brooklyn, that’s my home!” said the driver. I was glad someone knew where we were headed. The driver dropped me off on a semi-abandoned street lined with warehouses and sped away. I was a half-hour early for the interview, so I decided to get a bearing on my surroundings.

Across the street from the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Waverly Avenue, there was an undeniable dichotomy. On one side of the street sat a Jewish school that looked more like a truck repair garage. On the other side, street art featuring monster zombie rats covered the brick façade. Next to the rat art, a band that looked like a blend of Boy George and the Insane Clown Posse was filming a music video. Around the corner sat a Fresh Fanatic grocery store featuring locally crafted beers and artisanal kimchi. On the other end, an old dive bar had been converted into a sleek Brooklyn Roasting Co. coffee shop. This block was raw and conflicted, but progressive. It was Brooklyn Juxtaposition at its finest. And midway up the block on Waverly Street, in a small warehouse art studio, Christophe Roberts is part of the evolution.

Roberts’ studio producer, Corece, soon arrived and we made our way to the workspace. We passed the rat art and the Insane Clown Posse video shoot and headed into a warehouse stairwell. Up a few flights, and winding through some dark hallways, Corece opened the door to a room where the madness took place.

The studio was not large – maybe 300 square feet – but the same primal glares of Roberts’ creatures that were on display at Air Max Con were also present here. An eagle, again with wings spread, was hanging from the ceiling. A chimpanzee was lurking in the corner - both trapped in the space, but also guarding it.

A few minutes later, Roberts arrived. Donning a black tee, ripped bleached jeans and Air Force One “Wheats,” we exchanged pleasantries and talked about his favorite Jordans (the 3’s), and the fresh pair of Air Max 1 “Safari’s” sitting in his glass case.

An artist’s roots are usually the most important part of the story, so that’s where we began. Roberts grew up on the North Side of Chicago in the 80’s. “I was raised by two beautiful black women – my mother and aunt. My aunt ran several different art programs around the city, so that was my introduction into art early on. I started messing with paper really young. I’d take paper plates, flip them, glue them to make a dome, put fins on them, cut windows out of them, and make UFO shapes.”

At the same time, Roberts also hung out with his cousins who were dancers for famous rappers like Heavy D and Busta Rhymes. “Before I knew what cool was, cool was being put on me. It was a crazy time in hip-hop – Kanye West was selling beats on the street. NO ID, Common Sense were big. You’d meet up with like 80 kids in the park, and they’d all have their sketchbooks. Music was my thing, but I was always doing art at the same time,” said Roberts.

Once high school came to a close though, Roberts had to make some decisions. “One of my teachers told me to go check out portfolio day. This school in Seattle, Cornish College of the Arts, looked at my work. They said they’d give me a scholarship and I was like, done.”

At Cornish, Roberts refined his craft and focused on illustration and 3D art. He would spend the next eight years in Seattle making connections and refining his craft. After that, he returned to Chicago in the mid 2000’s.

“I had an art studio at the Zhou B Art Center with this artist, Hebru. We would have these art openings and different people would come through, collectors and so forth. We really started getting a buzz for ourselves in Chicago.”

At one point, in order to make some room for some of his pieces, he had to break down about 50 shoeboxes. “When I took them apart and started looking at all the patterns and details, my first idea was to lay them flat and spray paint over them. When I started bunching up some of the boxes, they came out three-dimensionally, and I kind of got the idea – that looks like a forehead, I could pop that out, next thing you know I went head down for like seven days and I just built this lion head. I don’t know why I started with a lion, I just did. I had that type of ferocious energy – I didn’t do anything else except THIS thing for the next couple days.”

The results were groundbreaking. Sneakerheads and the art community were riveted by his new concept. “At one point, my studio was like a zoo. I was so into it, I built a sculpture that was bigger than the door, so I had to convince the studio to cut the wall open and build a double door for it. We were getting so many people there that they had no problem doing it for us. From there the story just evolves and keeps going.”

At this point though, Roberts experienced some major setbacks. He was about to sign a lease to open a commercial gallery in Chicago, but there were some issues with the building. One evening, he was driving on 18th Street on the South Side and got hit by a drunk driver going 80 mph. He incurred severe neck injuries and had to go through 6 months of physical therapy. The accident got him thinking about his career, though.

As Roberts was recuperating, he got a call from the highly regarded contemporary art magazine, Hi-Fructose. “They wanted to do a piece on me. I’ve been collecting that magazine for years. At this time, I was sick and wasn’t going to the art studio though. I was chilling with my boy Rocky, listening to Kanye. The song about him moving to New Jersey with his mom came on. I had 2K in my bank account at the time, and my boy said something that really hit me. He said, ‘Do you want to be in Chicago when this Hi-Fructose article comes out, or do you want to be in New York?’” It was at the moment that Roberts decided to pack his things and head for the Big Apple.

Roberts had success right off the bat. His pieces were displayed at some smaller galleries on the Lower East Side, and art collectors began buying his pieces. “I haven’t really had to depend on art galleries. I’ve really just been able to work on my own. I have a huge silverback gorilla at the Chicago Board of Trade, Howard Tullman is a major collector, doctors and lawyers buy my pieces,” said Roberts.

Eventually, Nike started noticing as well. “I got plugged into Air Max Con by a marketing agency showing Nike my work. They wanted sneaker culture artists from New York. I had worked with Nike in the past – I did the Kobe Bryant installation in LA at the Staples Center, I did the storefront for 21 Mercer (in SoHo) once. Its such a big company that this was the first official interaction where they got behind me in a brand collaboration.”

Roberts believes he was front and center at Air Max Con because of how authentic his work is. “This wasn’t anything that was fake. This is something I did before Nike even knew who I was. I’ve been doing it for years with no plan on how to make money. I was doing it for the love of it.”

'Killa Trent'

What makes Roberts’ sculptures especially intriguing are the stories behind them. Take the chimpanzee, for example. “When I did Killa Trent, I was watching Oprah and some chick was on there and her face was gone – like ripped off. This chimp named Trent was living in captivity, poorly kept for years in Connecticut. He got out and tore this woman’s face off. That’s where Killa Trent came from.”

Roberts believes that when animals like gorillas are mistreated, there’s a price to pay. “That’s why he looks so mean - what do you expect? It’s closest to us emotion-wise and structure-wise, and you treat it like that. They think like us - we evolved from that.”

Roberts’ logo – a set of sharp, jagged teeth, is also inspired by this savageness. “My logo is all about harnessing the aggression and the anger that I’ve had, just from personal things that I’ve dealt with - with family, and things just not working out the way I’ve wanted them to, and taking that energy and focusing it in a more positive light.”

If you look closely, the bottom teeth resemble Basquiat’s famous crown. “I didn’t think of the Basquiat connection until after, I will say that. And I was trying to draw teeth – there is that connotation. I have a short temper, and it draws into all that. Art is a form of psychology, a therapy for me. No family is perfect, I love everybody but I’m just angry about a lot of stuff, as we all are.”

'The Logo' and the inspiration

Harnessing that anger and channeling it into future projects is the key for Roberts now. He plans on creating more lower-priced sculptures for his sneakerhead fans. “The sculptures start out at $5,000, so not everyone can afford them. I want to find a price point that’s a couple hundred dollars. I want everyone to grab a piece of this movement and get involved. Making prints, more animals, other subject matters. The clothing line is going to be out in about a month. This line is called Loyalty Is Everything (LIE). I also want to look at a lot of religious stuff – Indian religions, African tribal stuff. That should keep me busy for years.”

Last year, a new magazine publication made its way onto the sneaker scene. In an age where most people between the ages of 6 and 60 gather information through their laptops, smartphones and tablets, launching a new magazine isn’t always the best idea. Sneaker News has quite a following, though. The brainchild of Yu Ming Wu (Founder and Editor in Chief) and John Kim (Digital Content Director), the account has over 400,000 followers on Twitter and 4.6 million followers on Instagram. For your latest sneaker info online, Sneaker News is one of the main sources. So, starting a magazine wasn’t the most outrageous idea in the world.

About 6 months ago, a friend introduced me to Stephen Halker, a 30-something wearing unassuming jeans and a jacket. Halker was also sporting the Air Jordan 1.5 “Breds,” so we immediately had something to discuss. As it turned out, Halker was an artist and actually drew the front and back covers and several other illustrations for Sneaker News Volume 2. The magazine had peaked my interest before, but after meeting Halker, it was directly in my line of sneaker vision.

In January, Halker and I sat down for brunch at a small French restaurant called Bar Six in the West Village to discuss the story behind Halker’s Sneaker News drawings. Halker grew up in Southern California, and attended Orange County High School of the Arts. “I was exposed to a lot of different art forms and techniques – murals, print making, pottery, painting. I felt like I had a leg up going to college,” he said.

Halker was also involved in the skate culture scene. “Part of that culture is being anti-consumerist even though you’re buying the products,” he noted.

At 18, he needed to get out of his hometown and make his own way. He applied to several East Coast colleges, specifically art schools in New York City. “I didn’t want to have a college experience. I just wanted to be involved in regular life.”

With that in mind, he attended The School of Visual Arts, located on 23rd and Lexington Ave in New York. While there, he worked on mastering his craft through comics and realistic oil paintings.

After he graduated from SVA in 2001, it took a while for him to find his niche. “I didn’t have a strong understanding of the business, I didn’t have a portfolio.” Halker went to Europe the summer after he graduated. When he returned, 9/11 happened.

“I was living in Williamsburg at the time. We stood on our roof and watched the buildings fall. New York got really depressing; it was so oppressive.”

That Fall, Halker got a job as a commercial casting cameraman. After that, he got a job drawing human organs for scientific textbooks. During that time, his friend was working for Zoo York and got him a job there. “I went from drawing brains to skateboard graphics.”

As time went on, Halker made connections and started doing some drawings for Nike. His first success came with the “Tales from the Kitchen” campaign, which highlighted how the Hyperfuse basketball shoe was created. After that, Halker worked on an animation for the Nike Free, one of the most innovative designs in sneaker history.

Halker’s sneaker animation success turned into other jobs for retail giants like Foot Locker. He helped create commercials for the 20th anniversary of the Dream Team in 2012 for the Olympics. He also worked on Nike’s “Evolution of Air” campaign.

At this point, I had to sit back and attempt to process all the influential work he had done. I had to admit, I was pretty impressed. Halker didn’t seem to be. “Nike does so much marketing – it just seemed small what I did.”

But Sneaker News didn’t think so. An old connection at Zoo York was working on the first publication of the magazine and asked Halker if he’d be interested in doing an illustration. “I did two small spots for the first publication and really enjoyed the experience.”

Halker’s drawings were a hit, and for the second publication, Sneaker News asked him to do some more drawings for an issue dedicated to Michael Jordan. They ended up publishing 12 images of his, including the front and back covers.

From start to finish, the drawings took about three months to complete. “There weren’t that many drafts. I came in for a meeting, went through the whole deck. They knew how they wanted the story to progress. It was really fun – it was a team effort.”

Looking at all the detail in Halker’s drawings, it seemed pretty clear that he was a perfectionist with his work. I asked if he was ever satisfied with the final product. “By the time I’m done with something, I can’t stand it. I have to finish something really quickly in order for me to still like it when it’s done. When people want it, I’m always surprised. I can see every error. I don’t like the way I drew this hand. You’re never going to be happy with anything, just try to get to a finished state – get it done and let it live it’s own life. You kind of have to say, ‘It’s done.’”

Currently, Halker is working on more drawings for the next issue of Sneaker News. Since Kobe Bryant announced he would be retiring at the end of the season, he has also been working on some special drawings of the Laker star.

Halker admits that the more he focuses on drawing athletes and the famous sneakers they wore, the more he learns about them and grows to appreciate the shoes. His favorite Jordans are the 1’s and the 6’s. As a Brooklyn resident living in a typically small apartment, space is always an issue, so he has to be careful how many new pairs he picks up. “I just can’t get too into it, because my wife would kill me,” Halker jokes.

His comment rings truer than he might realize for many other sneaker collectors out there.

Check out more of Stephen Halker's work here, and order your copy of Sneaker News Volume 2 here.

"With the first pick in the 2010 NBA Draft, John Wall selects... Reebok?"

Photo courtesy of: Forces_Whitaker

Big name sneaker contracts can get interesting. Whenever an electrifying athlete enters the professional level, all the major shoe brands work with the agents to talk about potential contract negotiations. If all goes well, the particular athlete would end up signing with the brand.

John Wall was a highly regarded target coming out of Kentucky, but he eventually chose to sign with Reebok. It's safe to assume that Nike showed some interest towards Wall's camp, and this Nike Hyperfuse 2010 PE might be some soft evidence.

Photo courtesy of: Forces_Whitaker

Photo courtesy of: Forces_Whitaker

Photo courtesy of: Forces_Whitaker

I'm not sure if this PE was used in any sort of Nike sales pitch, but it definitely looks convincing to me. If the Kentucky Blue colorway doesn't catch your attention, the personalized logo might do the trick. This minimal "JW11" can be spotted on the ankle collar, which is obviously made up of his JW initials and his UK jersey number.

John Wall recently signed with agent Rich Paul, and is probably leaving adidas once his contract expires. He's been spotted in a few different Nikes as of late... Will we finally see a Nike John Wall signature shoe?